Stomach Flu with a Fundoplication

One of the reasons we kept Nolan out of school for six weeks after his Nissen was to keep him away from all the germs circulating around the school. I hoped that when the kids came back from Spring Break, they would be hale and hearty.

Unfortunately, Nolan caught a bug. He woke up at 6:00am on Friday morning, holding his hand over his mouth and coughing/gagging. With the fundoplication, he can't actually throw up. So he retches, and it is awful.

He retched almost continuously, and I placed a phone call to his surgeon's office and to his pediatrician. In the meantime, I vented his g-tube: this allowed him to "vomit" through the tube every time he retched. It helped to ease the force of the retching, and helped relieve the feeling of nausea.

I honestly don't know how kids manage with fundoplications when there is no g-tube placed. We have used Nolan's on a daily basis to vent air, and it was vital during this bout of tummy flu. The surgeon confirmed we were doing what we should do - leaving the tube open to vent and waiting it out.

Unfortunately, he was still retching at 1:00pm and had not been able to drink any fluids (we had to vent off any attempted fluid intake because he would start retching again). His pediatrician's office had an opening at 3:00pm, and is now ensuring that Nolan sees the same professional at each visit because his case is "complicated."

I was so relieved to get into the same nurse practitioner that has seen him for the past few visits. She weighed him, and he's 32.6 pounds. A slight drop from his post-fundoplication weight of 33 pounds, but I should be able to get him back to baseline once he's well. They also took a urine sample - he had ketones due to dehydration from the vomiting. There was some debate about whether to do IV rehydration, but we decided to hold off and see how he kept fluids down since the last time he retched was 1:00pm.

If he started to retch again during the night, we were to take him to the emergency room. If he was ill in the morning, we were to bring him back to the pediatrician's office right away for rehydration with IV fluids.

I took him home and we tried small amounts of pedialyte through the g-tube. 10 minutes later, he was fine. 30 minutes later, he was still fine. He drank a Capri Sun and kept that down, too.

Rehydrating via the "Easy Button"

I am so thankful it was a 12 hour bug rather than a 24 hour bug, and that he is right as rain today. He's eating, drinking, and playing again.

Also? I love that mic-key button. I never thought I would say that, but it kept him out of the hospital yesterday. Without the pedialyte through the g-tube (he refused to drink it), we would have been in the hospital for IV rehydration yesterday afternoon.

Here's to a happy (and healthy) weekend!